I’ve been hosting An Taobh Tuathail (“The Other Side”) — affectionately known as ATT — on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta since its first broadcast on May 1st 1999.

Initially the show aired seven nights a week and I presented the show four nights, with other presenters - to mention just a few - including Cathal Ó Cuaig, Ben Ó Faoláin and the late great, Rónán Mac Aodha Bhuí hosting the programme on the other three nights.

Currently, the show airs from Monday to Friday. Monday’s show airs from 11pm to 1am, while on Tuesday to Friday, I broadcast from 10pm to midnight.

For those who might not be in a position to tune in when the show airs, ATT can be accessed online anytime that suits you.

A huge online archive, dating back to 2013, exists here, including streams for each show and all playlists.

I present the programme in Irish, but the music I play comes from all over the world. I also play a lot of Irish ‘underground’ sounds. I’ve never been great at succinctly explaining what the show exactly does, but a musician once described it as a platform for “music that might otherwise slip between the cracks and perhaps not get much, if any, radio play”.

It helps that I have complete freedom to play whatever catches my ear. There are no playlist restrictions on ATT, as is the case with almost every show on commercial and national radio. If I’m connecting with a track, I’ll play it. As another listener wrote: “[what] is great about ATT is that Cian can be relied to give interesting new music, from Ireland and beyond, a shot based solely on the fact that it’s good. It doesn’t matter if it’s a major recording artist with a big PR team behind them, or some guy toiling away on beats in his bedroom, if it’s got a bit about it, chances are Cian will give it a spin”.

I also love that there are no ad breaks, and there are no breaks for news or sport. I present the links with a minimum of fuss. The focus is completely on the music and the spell it casts for two uninterrupted hours each night.

“Tearmann ceoil ag deireadh an lae”.

In terms of format, Mondays and Tuesdays are the gentler shows, featuring everything from weird-beard folk to twinkly electronica, ambient, and dream-pop. Thursdays and Fridays are aimed squarely at the dance-floor, with house, chug, techno, bass, and other electronic music genres—pretty much what you’d expect to hear in a club! Wednesday night is the outlier: anything that might not quite fit into the other shows might be played here, from alt-rock to synth-pop, from post-punk to oddball dub, from breezy Balearic to new twists on the Hardcore continuum.

It's an obvious and lazy comparison, then, to call presenter Cian Ó Cíobhain the Irish John Peel, but his laid-back manner, combined with the eclectic and astonishing mix of sounds played on the programme, make him more worthy of the mantle than any other DJ I'm aware of in Britain or elsewhere today.

– The Quietus

I spend countless hours each week sourcing new music and I do my best to keep the playlists as fresh as possible. My curiosity for discovering music that I’ve never heard before is insatiable and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have a platform such as ATT to share my discoveries with others.

Over a quarter of a century since the show began, I believe that the show’s longevity is down to listeners trusting me to help them navigate the inexorable flow of new music in the over-saturated, digital world. Our attention spans are being constantly bombarded by the incessant lure of new sounds clamouring for your attention. There is just so much music out there and it can be overwhelming for people leading busy lives to keep up with it at all. Sometimes people need more than an algorithm as a guide to find music to connect with. Much of my work is attempting to separate the wheat from the chaff and presenting what I feel are worthwhile discoveries to my listeners.

If you’d like to send your music for consideration for airplay, the email address for music submissions is attrnag@rte.ie

AIFFs for dance music (will accept 320KBPS MP3s for non-dancefloor music) and no WAVs please. GRMA.